Tip-sy Tuesday: No. 27

It’s New Year’s, I bet a lot of you (like me) made a resolution to be more organized. So, for at least the rest of this month and maybe into next month, I’ll be bringing you tips on Tuesday to help you organize your beading world.

So, without any ado whatsoever, this week’s tip:

Tip No. 27: Get subscriptions to your favorite beading magazines

This tip is meant to help you organize your beading budget. I read A LOT of bead magazines to learn new tips, find out what’s going on in the beading world and get ideas for Strung Out, but I honestly hadn’t thought about how much I was spending when I would idly picked up the new copies of whatever beading magazines looked interesting that shopping trip. Sometimes, I had a coupon for 40 percent off at Hobby Lobby or Jo-Ann, but most of the time, I was paying cover price.

Not only did I end up with almost an entire year’s worth of six different magazines in 2007 (except for a couple missing issues), I had bought DUPLICATE COPIES OF SOME OF THEM. Ugh! And you can’t return a magazine … not only do you feel kinda dumb doing it, most stores assume you read it cover-to-cover before you brought it back and just frown upon it; some won’t even take them. I ended up just leaving the duplicates on a table here at MySA.com, free for the taking, and out $6 or more per copy.

So this year, I resolved to get subscriptions, and was amazed by the amount of money I saved.

All in all, that’s about $420 in magazines, if you pay cover price. By getting subscriptions, I saved myself about $165, and by using the rewards program on my credit card, I got almost $55 in rewards. And I’m not even counting the sales tax and the gas driving to the store.

Perhaps you’re not the magazine reader I am, but even one subscription could save you a little green.

Happy Tuesday, and happy beading!

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Have a beading tip you’d like to share? E-mail me at brown@mysanantonio.com, and I’ll post your tip in Strung Out. (Don’t worry, I’ll post your first name, but no last name or e-mail address.)